ShoeGuy: Break on Through

The readers may not always be right, but they often write, as did one who has been “running in and collecting shoes since the late ’70s.”

“Why not a column on shoes that broke new ground?”

You mean trail shoes with big honkin’ backhoe-like outsoles?

“Like the old Brooks shoe made of Gore-Tex, the Reebok Aztek, the Nike Mariah, etc.”

Oh, you mean shoes that broke new ground as in innovation, bringing something new to the dance, that old paradigm shifting deal. Interesting idea, as well as an interesting group of oldies you noted.

That old Brooks shoe was, if memory serves, the Hugger GT, so named not because of its Gore-Tex upper, but because of two eyelets on the sides under the ankle designed to tighten the heel counter. The eyelets didn’t work, and the upper leaked (this was before seam-sealing), but otherwise it was a pretty good . . . uh . . . it had a nice color.

The Reebok Aztek (as opposed to the much later “Aztrek”) was so light and flexible that you could easily wad it up into a ball. At a time when most running shoes had the flexibility of a work boot, the Aztek was a bedroom slipper.

And the Nike Mariah: the first racing flat with what was then that mysterious Nike Air midsole which had appeared in only a couple of trainers. (The Tailwind and Columbia, if you’re scoring at home.)

OK, you got me to thinking about this old shoes, new ground thing, and naturally I came up with a list of my own. None of your picks, interesting though they were, made my cut, but that’s OK. I’m sure there are reasons mine didn’t make yours, and it doesn’t matter as long as ground continues to be broken.

So here now, in no particular order of ground-breakedness, is ShoeGuy’s official list of running shoes that changed running shoes for the better.

Any such list would have to include the Nike Waffle Trainer. No Air, just a simple basic shoe featuring a full-length, hard rubber outsole with tough waffle studs that absorbed shock on pavement and provided traction on dirt. Affordable, durable, and very, very popular, it was the first trainer for millions new to the sport during the first running boom.

Some might pick the first Nike Air shoe, the Tailwind, as a ground-breaker, but it was so slow to take off it should have been called the Headwind. The first Nike Pegasus, however, with a tiny Air unit in the heel, put more runners on Air than any Nike before, and in doing so, launched what would become known as the midsole wars between the shoe companies.

ASICS was the first to answer that Air challenge with the GT-II, circa 1985. It was the first Gel shoe and signaled that proprietary midsole technologies were the future of cushioning.

Before that, the Tiger X-Caliber GT was the statement shoe from the company that soon became known as ASICS. It had the first plastic medial post. Nevermind that a good number of them popped out after a few dozen miles—it changed our ideas about stability in running shoes.

ASICS gets a third mention here with the Gel-Lyte, the first lightweight trainer, so light that many used it for racing. Up until then, a lightweight trainer wasn’t a shoe, but rather a runner who didn’t try very hard.

If you’ve been waiting for the Brooks Chariot to appear, here it is. Though not the first shoe with a dual-density midsole (ASICS again, but three spots on this list is enough), it was undoubtedly the most significant of the early “motion-control” trainers. When the Chariot arrived, aching knees everywhere stood, applauded, then went for a long one.

The Brooks Beast later took the Chariot’s stability up several notches. To this day, the Beast (and its distaff side, the Ariel) is the industry standard for heavy-duty pronation reduction.

The adidas Marathon Trainer was an almost perfect blend of cushioning, stability, and durability—by late 1970s standards. Today it would just be considered hard, stiff, and, OK, still very durable. In spite of that, legions of early running boomers did indeed run their first marathon in it. It broke new ground for another reason, however, as the road shoe that inspired the first trail running shoe.

And yes, that would be the adidas Response Trail, which first appeared in 1994. Its unique outsole spoiler in the heel area originated on the aforementioned Marathon Trainer.

New Balance broke new fiscal ground in the early ’80s with the world’s first $100 running shoe. The original 990, which probably should have sold for around 60 bucks, came in at $100 at a time when the average runner spent less than $50 for a good pair of shoes.

Finally, the Saucony Jazz—make that the Lady Jazz. The significance is not the fact that it was a nicely cushioned, flexible trainer for its day (1980), but that the women’s version (“ladies” at the time) taught us how to fit a typical female foot with a greater width ratio from heel to forefoot. Because of that happy design accident, Saucony remains more popular today with women than with men.

While these ground-breakers are all museum pieces, that doesn’t mean today’s shoes are innovation-challenged. It’s just that we won’t see what ground they break until it’s well tilled in future shoes. No doubt another look 20 years hence will yield a very different list.

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